I recently had a request from a client for an application that could be distributed and run from a USB memory stick. I wrote it in .NET of course, but some of the target machines don’t have the .NET framework installed (it’s getting more common, but it’s not ubiquitous yet). This wouldn’t have been a problem if we were installing the application because the installer would have taken care of that for me, but because it was designed to run from the USB memory stick I needed to write a bootstrap that ......

The Bluffer's Guide to C# 3.0 is an article that highlights most of the important new features in C# 3.0 with some key information about them. If you're a C# 2.0 dev this guide will allow you to fake it if you're ever quized about C# 3.0, although I think it is probably more useful as a list of things you should off and find out more about!

One of the many new features Microsoft is planning to bring to .NET 4.0 is Code Contracts. In a nutshell, this is a feature that allow a developer to formally specify the requirements of a function, and the state of the system when the function completes (e.g. A parameter will be non-null, or a property of the object will be greater than 0 at the end of the function). The initial work for this came from the Spec# project, a Microsoft Research project that extended the C# language to include keywords ......